Georgia Christal

Finding an Apartment – Tuesday, June 4, 1991

I’m exhausted. David walks to work. In the afternoon, back on the RER to St. Germain ⁽¹⁾ to look at the apartment. The Gardien of the apartment speaks absolutely no English. We realize the apartment will not be ready until July 1. Very nice place.

Back to the office we go. Louis arranged for us to meet a realtor [sic] in the town of La Vesinet in the afternoon to look at apartments in Las Vesinet / La Pecq that would be available sooner. We’re a little early so we drive to La Pecq.

Realizing we need to be going in a different direction, we follow a lady who turns left and so do we. A policeman whistles at us both and we pull over. The lady argues with him (in French) and then he comes our way. It was early afternoon and as he began to speak, his breath told us he had just finished a nice lunch with lots of wine.

David told him in French that he doesn’t understand French and he says “American?” and waves us on. We did learn that you are not to cross a solid line at any time on the road. The lady’s argument was that the line was worn away and she was right.

We arrive at the Realtors at 2:30pm for our appointment and no one in the office knows anything about an appointment for us. We have the notes on which apartments we are to look at and the name of the person to see, so somebody had to have talked to somebody.

A person would be available to take us around but we had to come back in about 45 minutes. So we investigated the town and small shops and discovered a pastry shop with the best “Palmiers” around. The apartments were not at all to our liking so we decided to wait until July 1 for the one in St. Germain.

Editor’s Notes

Since this journal was written far before the creation of a blog I will from time to time add a few links in this section [editor's notes] or other pertinent information.

(1) Saint-Germain-en-Laye is a small town in the western suburbs of Paris, France.